Keith Dugmore: The future of the Census
22 April 2014

Many of you will be aware that the MRS has been closely involved with ONS in its assessment of possible options for the next Census, "Beyond 2011". We responded to the formal consultation in late last year (click here for access to the response), and we now have news of the recommendation to government by Jil Matheson, the National Statistician, which can be summarised as:

• An online census of all households and communal establishments in England and Wales in 2021 as a modern successor to the traditional, paper-based decennial census. ONS recognises that special care would need to be taken to support those who are unable to complete the census online. 

This would be combined with:

• Increased use of administrative data and surveys in order to enhance the statistics from the 2021 Census and improve annual statistics between censuses.
• Together these would make the best use of all available data to provide the population statistics which England and Wales require and offer a springboard to the greater use of administrative data and annual surveys in the future.
• Further research is to be carried out over the coming months and years to determine the most appropriate blend of methods and data sources.

You can access the National Statistician's full recommendation by clicking here.

This is a good result – but only so far, because Treasury has to accept the cost-benefit analysis, and Government has to approve the recommendation.

Hard on the heels of this announcement, the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has just published its report “Too soon to scrap the Census" (click here for access to this report) observing that “most of the respondents to the ONS consultation and to PASC’s short inquiry agreed that the decennial census should be kept, and we agree”.

But PASC also tackles the key issue for the future, recommending that the ONS should set out a more ambitious vision for the creative and full use of administrative data to provide rich and valuable population statistics, which could potentially be more accurate and up-to-date than the census, and cover new topics.

The Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude’s objective of “better, quicker information, more frequently and cheaper” depends upon this. Moreover, these new methods of counting people should be additional to the census, not instead of it, and, using administrative data from HMRC, give us statistics on Income, which has so long been the holy grail for market researchers.

Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the MRS Census and Geodemographic Group unless otherwise specifically stated.